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Monday, April 23, 2012

No One Wants to Be the Loser at the Reunion

I found out a couple of days ago that the film of a guy I went to high school with was accepted at this year's Cannes Film Festival, arguably the most prestigious film festival in the world. And while I'm happy for him, I barely knew him in my fairly small class (only 150 people) and all I can think about is how its going to make my ten year high school reunion that much crappier to attend.

Granted my reunion won't be for another three years, I'm already dreading it. With the invention of facebook, I am in constant knowledge of how everyone is doing after graduation. The nice thing about facebook is I can hide feeds and ignore people. I imagine it's a little harder to do that at a reunion.

There's something you need to know about my high school: it's a national ranked high school. Like a top ten nationally ranked high school. Yes, I got a great education, yes, it opened doors for me, blah blah blah, but it also bred snobs like you would not believe.

You could probably divide my graduating class into three groups. About 50% of us (myself included) went onto college, got our degrees, got jobs, and behave like fairly normal people. Some of us are married or in long term relationships. We have jobs in our desired fields and don't live with our parents.

Another 40% composes the group I call the "high and mighties". These are the ones that love to talk about the Ivy League schools they went. The ones that offhand mention the thousands of dollars in national grant money they won. The ones that talk about the time they spent overseas, either researching classic literature, building schools in third world countries, or teaching English in Asia. The ones who talk about the big cities on the East Coast they now call home. The public office that they ran for (he lost, so I wish he'd really stop mentioning it.) And before you think I'm just being bitter (I'll admit it, I am a little), it's the fact that the snobbery feeds of off the snobbery of others. They have to one-up each other. They have to rub it in your faces that they are better than you. Things like they wish they could settle down like you, but with their fancy job/doctorate/saving-the-world and constant traveling, how could they? They wish they could have a simple 8 to 5 job like yours, it sounds so relaxing. We've had several unofficial reunions through the years, so trust me, I'm not just making this up. They just have this way of getting under my skin like you wouldn't believe. Making me doubt my amazing life and the decisions that have led me here. I hate them for that.

Lastly is the remaining 10% of my graduating class. These people cover the spread. They are the ones that dropped out of college to get married and moved back in with their parents once it fell apart. They are the ones who do build schools in Guatemala but would never mention it unless you brought it up. The one that ODed. The ones that are bartenders and waitresses. The truly nice, innocent ones and the ones that life wasn't so nice to.

And who knows? I'd imagine my group will be larger in three years at the official ten year reunion. The unlucky ones get their lives back on track and the "high and mighties" start to slow down and realize what we have.

But seriously, if this guys wins his category at Cannes, there will be no escaping the brown-nosing in three years. Ugh...